Film Reviews by Steve

WC Fields retains Kathleen Howard from It's a Gift as his shrewish wife, but this time has a more loving daughter (Mary Brian) to sweeten the dish. It's a Gift was hilarious, but awfully cold. Again there's a collection of sketches built around a loose narrative. Ambrose Wolfinger just wants to go to the wrestling...  

The best episode is the opener when the great comedian is forced down into the cellar by his wife to confront two burglars who are getting mellowly drunk on his applejack. Fields, the intruders and a cop end up harmonising sentimental Irish ballads together. For all of them, this is brief moment of respite, seized from the hell of domesticity.

 It's such a funny film because Fields' comic persona is so identifiable. His interminable suffering is revealed so succinctly, with a sudden nervous reflex or a mumbled aside. He has grown to accept his malign fate. And there's nothing he can do about it.  

Fields is always doing what he is asked, however absurd. Then is admonished when the outcome proves to be unsatisfactory. He acts without complaint or hope, and then gets nailed for it. And who doesn't know how that feels?! This is my pick as his best film. 

This adaptation by William Gibson of his own stage play retains its two wonderful Broadway leads: Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan, the educator of the deaf-blind and near mute seven year old Helen Keller played by Patty Duke. Sullivan teaches the wild, unreachable child to communicate through applying pressure to her teacher's fingers.

Sullivan went to live with Keller's family in Alabama, 1887, with the South still destitute from the Civil War. Arthur Penn frames the story and its characters in the terms of the kind of heroism normally seen in war films or epics. And that feels appropriate. Sullivan's astonishing enterprise is an act of audacious bravery, even though achieved in a domestic context.  

There is an expressionistic look, with noirish lighting and distortion. Sullivan with her pale, traumatised face, her own near blindness hidden behind black glasses looks like a visitation from a horror film. She is haunted by her agonising past in a Victorian asylum, tortured with guilt for the handicapped brother she left behind.  

This is southern gothic; it is full of atmosphere. There are long scenes of little or no dialogue or cutting, and without music. It looks artistic, but feels real. Most of all, it's Bancroft and Duke that endure, locked in the confrontation of their anguished, intimate darkness. They both won very well deserved Oscars.

Meticulous and and detailed version of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning classic. The casting is inspired, from Gregory Peck as the wise lawyer Atticus Finch, all the way down to Robert Duvall's debut as inarticulate recluse, Boo Radley. There are lovely child performances too, particularly from Mary Badham as Scout.

The first half is a character study as the children learn about life from their small southern town. The relationship between Atticus, a widower, and his daughter Scout, is sensitively sketched. The latter part relates to the lawyer's defence of a black farm labourer (Brock Peters) who has been set up by a mob of bigoted smallholders.  

The white agricultural workers of depression-era Monroeville, Alabama are destitute. They have nothing but their perceived superiority to even poorer black people, which they guard ruthlessly. The accused is found guilty of raping a white woman, not because he has a case to answer, but because he pitied her. Which strikes too deeply into the farmers' conviction of primacy.    

The rural south of the '30s is superbly realised. This is a memory film and there is an impression of time and events being distorted by the act of recollection. It's a remarkably subtle and intelligent film which made an issue of southern apartheid as the civil rights movement in America was coming into being.

Period recreation of the 1925 Scopes monkey trial (with the names changed) which prosecuted a tutor for explaining Darwinism in a Christian fundamentalist school in Tennessee. Spencer Tracy defends the jailed teacher against an unrecognisable Fredric March as a prosecuting lawyer who believes in a literal interpretation of the Old Testament.

But there is a deeper issue on trial. The prosecutor claims that religion is a comfort for communities made wretched by poverty. Even though he is is a politician, he offers no insight into how suffering might be relieved by other means. Besides, solace isn't the role of the faith we see in Hillsboro, Tennessee. Christianity is a means of suppression and of spreading ignorance, bigotry and hate.  

Some of the observations pass by a little too quickly. But for a film which is about a contest for the supremacy of ideas, it is extremely entertaining and the performances are a lot of fun, including Gene Kelly as an acerbic, loquacious news journalist. The real flaw is the film seeks to find a balance between Christianity and science, which isn't possible. 

There is a caustic, witty conclusion to the long scenes of dialogue, which really sums up its themes in an instant: when the frenzied prosecutor collapses in court,  a voice passionately shouts out "Pray for a miracle and save our holy prophet" while another yells "Get a doctor"!

Merian C. Cooper started with an image of a giant ape on top of the Empire State Building, with fighter planes swirling overhead. Edgar Wallace wrote most of the rest of the plot, though it borrows from Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Willis O'Brien worked on modelling for that film in 1925, and returns to lead the incredible monster animation of Kong on Skull Island.

Robert Armstrong plays a megalomaniacal film producer who takes a crew into uncharted waters to research and exploit a legend about a land of giant creatures. He keeps his real mission a secret, especially from the starving ingenue (Fay Wray) he finds fainting in a queue for a soup kitchen in New York, who he proposes should star in his film.  

King Kong feels like an extreme experience, not just because of O'Brien's inspirational effects, but also the sheer amount of death. Its body count is off the chart. And because of the crazily entitled behaviour of the movie mogul who takes Kong back to wreck New York.

The use of sound is a landmark. Fay Wray's screaming is legendary. The cries of the beasts are fearsome. And Max Steiner's thrilling, groundbreaking score is all over the climax. King Kong is a triumph of technical achievement, but it is also a wonderful tale of exotic exploration, anthropological hokum, crazy entrepreneurship, two fisted action and, Fay Wray in her underwear. 

Comedy-drama based on William Faulkner's novel set in the American south of distant memory. A car is delivered to a rich family in a small rural town in Mississippi. Steve McQueen and Rupert Crosse play stable boys who 'borrow' the vehicle and drive the family's 11 year old boy (Mitch Vogel) to Memphis where bawdy adventures take place and life-lessons are learned.  

The narrator (Burgess Meredith) declares that the citizens of his youth were a 'pleasant courteous people'. This was a time of apartheid, religious fundamentalism and awful inequality! There is racism in the film (and free use of racist expletives) though it is stripped of menace. There are rednecks, a stupid fat sheriff, ribald sex workers... all the archetypes of southern comedy.

Perhaps this nostalgic idealisation of the past is more credible because it is a memory film. The suffering has been forgotten. If that hurdle can be overcome, and McQueen's rather grotesque, broad caricature, then there is a warm coming of age story set in the endless summers of all our pasts.

The photography is beautiful. There is a folksy score by John Williams, all banjos and fiddles, and a sentimental orchestral theme for those special moments. There is a sense of the past being a place of safety and childhood a time of adventure. Which has a certain innocent, naive charm. 

A strong candidate for writer-director Val Guest's best film. It's a police procedural about an investigation into a dismembered corpse which is found in a holiday home in a rather seedy postwar Brighton- based on a real life incident.

The detectives on the case are the sagacious, weary veteran Jack Warner, assisted by Ronald Lewis who does most of the leg work. They are a wonderful duo and handle the constant flow of dialogue with finesse. There are rich supporting performances all the way down the cast list.

There is a real flair to this film, with its credible and compelling screenplay, but mostly because of the sinuous, lively gaze of the camera, particularly during the examination of the murder scene. The neglected splendour of Brighton and Lewes and the big skies of the coastal suburbs convey a delightful melancholy.

All this is created with a crew who usually worked on Hammer productions, and without any incidental music at all. OK, Val Guest ended up making a Confessions film, and Space 1999, but at his peak he was a significant talent in postwar UK cinema. This is a classic British noir.

Orson Welles' legendary debut is the most analysed and critically revered film ever made. Charles Foster Kane is plucked from obscurity by a quirk of fate and becomes an immensely wealthy media baron. But the real Kane is so barely known that on his death his own newspaper launches an investigation into his life , and the meaning of his final word: Rosebud.  

The character is based on news tycoon William Randolph Hearst, but clearly also on Welles himself. The director arrived in Hollywood at 25 claiming to know nothing about the business, which is exactly how Kane announces himself on acquiring the National Inquirer newspaper. And at that age.

 This is a visually stunning film with Gregg Toland's glorious photography, and Welles' artistic visual imagination. Herman Mankiewicz and Welles' scenario is inventive and insightful and the dialogue laconic and witty. The performances have an offbeat quality out of step with forties Hollywood. It hums with the energy of innovation.  

Welles' classic is insightful on the dark arts of politics and capitalism and the men who succeed in those fields.  Both the film and Kane have become mythic creations. In our present era of populist/authoritarian leaders, Citizen Kane remains as relevant as it did in 1941. 

Leisurely rural drama set in the Australian bush which owes plenty to the American western but captures enough local culture and landscape to maintain a separate identity. The roving inhabitants of the outback are colourful, though perhaps it's an idealised portrayal of these characters and their far flung settlements.

The setting appears realistic. The costumes and interiors don't feel cleaned up at all.  The terrain is shot on location and the story is drawn from life. In fact the narrative feels like reportage: the 2-up, the bushfires, the sheep shearing contest and the horse racing.  

The performances of Robert Mitchum and, especially, Deborah Kerr are surprisingly authentic. They are a married couple working as drovers, steering sheep between the country towns of Jindabyne and Cawndilla. She and their son want to buy a farm and settle down but he wants to carry on drifting.

There is fine ensemble support from familiar British and Australian character actors (including Chips Rafferty). Most of all, there is an impression of the vastness of the Australian interior, and its people. Of rural loneliness and the vulnerability of isolation, but also of a resilient frontier spirit. 

Faithful version of Tennessee Williams' unsuccessful 1957 play Orpheus Descending, itself patterned on the classical myth. It is an ominous tale full of raw symbolism. For those who enjoy Williams' sad poetry and empathise with his world view, this is a treat. And the dialogue is very quotable.

Marlon Brando delivers a stoned performance as a beautiful nonconformist who blows into a southern town in thrall to racism and violence, and which conceals a guilty secret. The drifter becomes the lover of the suffering wife (Anna Magnani) of a violent, dying bigot.  

It is an allegory about purity and corruption. The capitalist world is intrinsically unholy, where human souls are bought and sold. Only the artist can be free of this contamination and become celestial. Like the visionary painter (Maureen Stapleton) or the newcomer, a free spirit whose guitar is inscribed by the great singers of the blues.

 It is the imagery that matters. The hero wears a snakeskin jacket which denotes he is a wild thing, and which he sheds at the end to become a relic that inspires future disciples.  There is an abundance of abstract talk and little plot. It fared poorly, falling between the eras of the Beats and the Hippies, who may have embraced this cryptic parable.

Heartbreaker updated from Lillian Hellman's 1934 play about two female teachers who are destroyed when a young student falsely accuses them of being lovers. The girl who makes up the lie out of spite (Karen Balkin) is a convincing villain and the rich, small town bigots who victimise the friends are a sinister and vengeful mob. 

Audrey Hepburn is fine as a rather pristine schoolmistress who is deprived of her planned marriage by the gossip. But Shirley MacLaine is the heart of the film, as a kind of soul mate unaware she really is a lesbian. The child''s malicious lie is a scandal, but the teacher's ignorance of her sexualty is a tragedy.

Shirley MacLaine is magnificent. Her performance cuts so deep- not so much her anguish in confronting this fundamental truth about herself, but because she sees her true identity as degenerate and unendurable. Her pain is so pitiful. By killing herself, she sets her friend free, which I suppose is the ultimate expression of love. The climax is truly devastating.

This was still a controversial story in 1961 and time hasn't dulled its impact. Homosexuality is no longer scandalous, but these emotions are still in play. And the capacity for onlookers to cheapen, malign and offend is greater than ever. It's an emotional powerhouse, which features one of the great performances. And an example of William Wyler's cinematic artistry.

This has an aura of nocturnal transience. Strangers cross paths in bus stations, hotels, waiting rooms and pool halls. It traps these nightflies in the frame of its b&w photography, in its noirish lighting, its urban set design and authentic pool hall locations. It is realistic, yet as poignantly mythic as an Edward Hopper painting.

Most of all it catches the essence of this world in its ill-fated anti-hero, the pool shark Fast Eddie Felson who must overcome personal tragedy to beat Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) in an epic contest at the Ames Pool Hall. Eddie is brilliantly inhabited by Paul Newman with huge intensity and charisma and sadness.

 Newman and Piper Laurie as his lonely, aimless, alcoholic lover are extremely affecting together, captured in the deep, narrow spaces of her apartment. George C. Scott is tough and intimidating as Eddie's manager who shows the hustler how much of himself he has to sell in order to succeed.

The film is all atmosphere. The scenes develop at leisure, assembling the strangers in a sort of ceremony in the pool rooms as the night settles in and the hustle begins. The pessimistic script sounds like beat poetry. Some of the dialogue is thrilling. So lovely, so full of sorrow. 

Perhaps the ultimate triumph of the Hollywood studio system. It wasn't a prestige project. No one knew they were making a classic. But because Warner Brothers had great salaried talent to call on, they transformed an unproduced one act play set in Casablanca during WWII, into something enduring and universal.  

It lacks realism, but it feels true. During the cathartic scene when the refugees of many countries sing La Marseillaise in Rick's cafe to drown out the Germans' anthem, the cast and extras were in tears for real. Many of them really were fugitives from the Nazis. Humphrey Bogart and Dooley Wilson are the only American actors.  

What gives the work cohesion is Max Steiner's famous score and Julius and Philip Epstein's legendary script. What exalts the film is the compelling romance between Rick (Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Berman). She gives the film so much of its emotional intensity, he delivers the sassy humour and famous epigrams with immortal cool.

Maybe the well known production complications contributed to the impression of a precarious world. Casablanca could have been just another film on the Warner's roster. But it is loved, because it captures a sensation of the uncertainty of exile at crossroads in history while touching our hearts and giving us faith in a greater good.

Tennessee Williams' classic of American theatre was adapted for the screen by its stage producer Elia Kazan with reluctance as he felt he had achieved as much as he could with the play on Broadway. It was controversial in New York- in Hollywood, it was a scandal. But, despite the censorship problems, the play survives remarkably intact.

This was the first Hollywood film to feature a jazz soundtrack. Some of it was suppressed for being too sexy! Language and insinuation formed battle lines. While the play is about changes in the American South and the precariousness of enlightenment, it is just as true to say it is about Williams' own heart. He felt violated by the furore.

Kazan took three of his main players with him to Warner Brothers: Karl Malden, Kim Hunter-who is superb- and Marlon Brando. And Brando was a sensation. We'll never know what a shock his performance must have been. Nothing like it had been on the screen before. It's crazy he didn't win the Oscar.

The three other stars did, including Vivien Leigh as the ethereal, vulnerable Blanche. Her and Brando's scenes together are extraordinary. They made two of the great dramatic roles their own. Blanche's fight for survival is a heartbreaker. And she becomes an exotic figure of southern gothic, destroyed by the way the world changes. 

This looks back to Howard Hawks' pre-code film, The Dawn Patrol, which was about WWI flyers and their response to the seeming inevitability of death.  Their survival under pressure forms a bond and an unshakeable code. And it also looks forward to Casablanca whose romance is very similar.      

These men deliver the mail in the fog over the Andes. But they will transit anything, including nitroglycerine! Cary Grant is the boss who hires a flyer now married to the only woman he ever cared about... And the new man is reckoned to have once bailed out of a crash which killed his co-pilot... thus breaking the code.  

This is Cary Grant's first really successful dramatic role. And it is Rita Hayworth's breakout from support parts in B films. Both are excellent. Two out of three ain't bad; Jean Arthur is badly cast as the showgirl interloper who stumbles on this exotic other world.  

There's shadows and fog,  and life threatening heroics with plenty of action and a lot of fast, tough crosstalk. There's a gallery of mavericks who turn up on a mountain in South America determined to get the mail out, no matter what. These are the thematic threads that Hawks would weave over his career, creating a kind of genre of his own.